


Tell Me, How Does A Man Change The Universe?

by jayjaybird



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical Psychological Horror, M/M, Martin Is Going To Have His Found Family If It Kills Him, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:53:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21677059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayjaybird/pseuds/jayjaybird
Summary: The world ended quickly, as it turned out.It ended like the sinking of the sun beneath the horizon, when the darkness falls sudden and heavy as an unexpected hand on your shoulder. It ended abruptly, like a book with a torn out page. It ended in the blink of an eye.Or rather, thought Martin, the unblinking of an eye.Or: Martin sets out to make things right (no matter what the cost), Jon actually makes some friends (after being bullied into it), and everyone figures out what it means to be human.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 108
Kudos: 677
Collections: Great Time Travel Fics, RaeLynn's Epic Rec List





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Hi Everyone!
> 
> This is my first work in The Magnus Archives fandom, so hopefully it's as enjoyable as all the other works I've had the chance to read. This archive contains some wonderful writers and I'm very happy that we're all able to share and build off of this captivating piece of media.
> 
> I will say that this story was plotted out before Season 4 was fully released, and that I haven't finished listening to Season 4 yet - I'm having some terrible anxiety over hearing bad things happen to these characters. I know the basic gist of the plot so there's no need to avoid spoilers in any comments you care to leave, but please be aware that details might not align perfectly with the canon.
> 
> The story's title comes from Lord Huron's 'The Balancer's Eye'. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I truly hope that you enjoy it!

The world ended quickly, as it turned out.

It ended like the sinking of the sun beneath the horizon, when the darkness falls sudden and heavy as an unexpected hand on your shoulder. It ended abruptly, like a book with a torn out page. It ended in the blink of an eye.

_Or rather_ , thought Martin, _the unblinking of an eye_.

He had to bite down on a giggle at the phrase and then the giggle threatened to turn into tears – he fought even harder against those. Ever since the end had come, his mind seemed to be caught in a strange loop: his thoughts were often so hysterical that they doubled-back into reason, before they twisted in on themselves again – a Mobius strip of panic and paranoia.

Because the funny thing – the absolutely bloody hilarious _thing –_ was that the world hadn’t really ended at all. There was no rain of fire and brimstone from the sky; the ground did not open and swallow them whole. No darkness, no blood, no filth. Everything was the same, but everything was also _different_.

There were no people on the streets, for one thing; Martin noted this in a distant part of his mind. Most of the population seemed to be shutting themselves inside their houses, only going out for the necessities of work and food. It didn’t _really_ help with the tension they felt – the unending weight, the unending wait – but they pretended it did.

(Except now there was always a little chorus in the back of their minds. It whispered-sighed-sang like the wind through eaves, invisible but ever-present.)

They could pretend they didn’t feel eyes on their back at every moment – when they bent over their computers or at the sink as they washed up.

(It sang old, simple tunes, the ones that everyone knows deep down. The ones that are never really forgotten.)

And they could pretend when they stood in the shower, water pounding in their ears, that there was nothing on the other side of the curtain.

(Songs like _i-am-here-i-am-behind-you.)_

And they could pretend, as they tucked their children into bed, that there was no monster watching them through the closet doors.

(Songs like _do-you-feel-me-do-you-feel-me-i-am-reaching-for-you._ )

And they could pretend, when they were alone in the dark, that they didn’t feel the urge to turn around and see what was behind them.

(Songs like _do-you-see-me-i-see-you.)_

And they could pretend that they didn’t know what was worse: the fear of the unknown or the fear of never knowing…

(Songs like _it-is-the-last-thing-you-will-know-but-god-oh-god-you-want-to-know-it.)_

At least things weren’t as bad in London as they were in other countries, Martin mused, studying the land before him, trying to chart a course through the debris covering the ground. Riots were becoming more and more common across North America, as people finally snapped under the pressure of the Beholding’s unrelenting gaze. It was a presence they could feel but not comprehend; it sent many spiraling into madness when they failed to identify what was causing their distress. The easy access to guns and the sheer number of people with a grudge against the government didn’t help, either.

Of course, it was harder to get information across the population, nowadays – most people had felt a growing sense of unease whenever they looked at their phones or their computers: the feeling that the machines were looking back at them. As though their technology was studying them in turn; as though they were nothing but collections of data to be shifted through.

Martin wasn’t even sure if anyone realized the apocalypse had come and gone. They were just scrabbling around, desperate for any logical explanation – surely the idea that another country was spying on them was more rational than an entity of immense and unknowable power, whose satisfaction came from knowing their every secret and every fear.

China and Japan had cut all communication with the rest of the world, ostensibly to protect their citizens from the interference of foreign powers.

(Martin had his own private theory, though. There were so many cameras in Asia, so many eyes to peer through. He wondered what terrible curiosity would overtake their people – how long it would take for all their barriers of morality and logic and self-preservation to be stripped away, before they were consumed with the desire to _know_ …)

(He wondered if, when the communication ban was lifted, if there would be anything left of them at all.)

Of course, Martin hadn’t survived this long without learning a few tricks on how to handle eldritch manifestations of fear. That wasn’t to say that it was easy, of course – if he let his concentration waver for even a moment, then all his protections would come crashing down. Every defense he’d built was as fragile as a house of cards, but he had to believe that they were better than nothing.

Belief, as it turned out, was central to the whole charade.

It had taken him a while to figure it out and even longer to test it, to see just how far he could push things. How far he could stretch the truth before the white-hot gaze of the Eye snapped back to him, burning until his mind was all scorched-earth and exposed, nerves and neural pathways shredded in its wake.

Really, it was only a few half-remembered facts from a biology class that had saved him.

Fact Number One: Every eye has a blind spot.

Although it might have been possible for the Eye to see everything at once, it was unnecessary.

He had studied the Thing-That-Had-Once-Been-Jon, had watched how its eyes shifted and tracked, staring at things far beyond any mortal sight. How the bloody tape recorder in its hand would hiss and crackle, a static screech cutting through the air as it recorded more information than any cassette could physically handle, as it spat out more information than humans could possibly comprehend.

The Eye saw everything, but what caught its attention was the novel, the strange, the grotesque. It had existed for so long and it longed to understand so many things. It wanted experiences, sampling snippets of life through its victims and then consuming them whole if it liked the taste. And if the humans wouldn’t act of their own accord, the Eye stared and stared and stared until their boundaries finally broke.

(It was every errant intrusive thought come to life – what will happen if I crash this car? If I drink this bleach? If I scratch and claw my flesh, how deep could I reach? If I said _these_ words to _this_ person, how much would it hurt them, would it wound them down to their soul, would it kill them?)

So Martin did his best to be Ordinary Old Martin, thinking his Ordinary Old Martin thoughts and sticking to his Ordinary Old Martin routines. He tried to be as common-place as possible, to blend in, to settle right into the blind spot left as the Eye watched more interesting things.

He taught himself to think without quite _thinking;_ how to have a thought without breaking it into easily digestible words that might draw notice. It was almost like meditation: a feeling or intention that would drift through him, a feeling that he would only pay half a mind to. If he paid too much attention to it, then the Eye might too.

He taught himself how to think in labyrinths; carefully constructed mazes of memories, alleyways of unlikely associations. His surface thoughts always led in circles, their well-trod paths tying neatly back together, so that anyone trying to follow them would be caught in the same unending loop. Is it technically a maze if there was no way to exit?

He paid too much attention to small fretful things and not nearly enough to the big important ones, letting his natural anxiety magnify and distort the world beyond reason or recognition. Just logical enough that it wouldn’t be marked as unusual, just strange enough that no one could track his thoughts with ease.

In short, he found the best way to survive in an insane universe was to drive yourself slightly insane.

(But deep, deep underneath everything, his true thoughts rushed like a river, bright and clear and carrying him ever-forward.)

Fact Number Two: Every image that the eye shows is a lie.

Humans are limited by the biology of the eye: there are colors that cannot be comprehended and spectrums entirely beyond reach. The eye delays, sees the after-image of things that have vanished. Some minds prompt hallucinations or illusions, forcing the eye to see what isn’t there; some see colors when they are given sounds, or hear sounds when they are shown colors.

The eye takes in every image upside-down; it is the mind that reverses it. Every color and pattern and texture is just the brain’s interpretation of photon particles careening through the world, the live-wire light show of a million electrical impulses.

The Eye might see everything, but everything is filtered through the imperfect illusion of human sight.

Martin’s eyes lied to him, so Martin lied right back to his eyes.

That was where the belief came in. He taught himself to see twice-over, just as he had taught himself to think twice-over. He held the image of his office in his mind: the chair with the wheel that squeaked, the coarse pile of the carpet, the desk overflowing with paperwork, the warm glow of his reading lamp, the reports he had read over and over again until they were burned in his memory. He laid this image over what he actually saw, and he believed so hard in the strength of the illusion that it became impossible to tell what was real and what was not.

So he was not walking along the rough-paved roads of Cowley, he was pacing back and forth across his office. He was not tripping over the garbage piling up on the street, he was catching his foot on the sharp corner of the desk. He was not watching the trees sway back and forth the wind, their bare limbs beckoning him onward – he was watching the shadows waver and play from his office window as the sun sank beneath the horizon.

(And he was most certainly _not_ stopping in front of the scarred wooden door of 105 Hill Top Road.)


	2. Chapter Two

Martin felt a distant memory rise to the surface of his mind.

He let it wash over him – himself, curled into a ball on the couch. A crocheted wool blanket draped over him: heavy as an embrace, and so warm that it left him with a dry, scratchy feeling on his skin. So warm that it felt like the start of a fever, but he felt so tired and cozy that he didn’t want to move, didn’t want to break the spell of quiet that had fallen over the house.

His mother had a good day, that day. The pain hadn’t been quite as strong as it often was and she had been able to fall asleep fast and easy.

(Sometimes he would lie awake long after the bedtime he had given himself, listening for her shallow breathing, the low moans of pain that escaped her lips. The occasional muffled scream, half-suffocated by a pillow or blanket.)

But he was warm and safe, now, his eyes so heavy that every time he blinked, he fell asleep for a short moment before the flickering lights of the television pulled him back into consciousness.

There was an old black-and-white movie on the television. He had the sound muted, so he wasn’t entirely sure what was going on – but old movies always had happy endings, didn’t they?

Except every time he blinked, slipping in and out of consciousness, in and out of time, this movie seemed to get worse. At first it had been a bunch of people exploring a grand old house.

He blinked –

and the house’s doors slammed open and shut of their own accord. The doorknobs rattled and the wood warped under some unseen force. This terrified the people on the screen.

He blinked –

and there were words scratched into the wall. _HELP ELENOR COME HOME_ , etched deep into the plaster and into Martin’s mind.

He blinked –

and a woman was falling from a balcony.

It all felt so strange and surreal – he couldn’t tell where the movie ended and his dreams began. He wanted to get up, wanted to switch off the television, but he was hot and dizzy with thirst and he couldn’t make his body move.

There was more to the film, he was sure, but the next time he woke up it was over.

It was late, then, when he woke – not the new-dusk, when slivers of the setting sun still shone through the cloud cover; nor was it just-gone-evening, when lights glowed warm from house windows, and silhouettes and shadows played across closed curtains. This felt like some secret, impossible hour, a time that didn’t really exist – or perhaps a time he wasn’t meant to exist in. He had the distinct impression that he wasn’t meant to be awake, that something _bad_ was going to happen to him because he was awake – 

He had leaned on the television remote sometime in his sleep; the television had switched off, taking the light with it. He could see nothing: The darkness hung around him like a shroud, close-kept and suffocating. He could hear the steady _tick-tick-tick-tick_ of the clock, but the sound seemed to come from all directions, hissing and seething like an animal circling the room.

He had clutched the blanket to his chest, fingers twined tight into the wool, holding so hard that his hands ached. He had shut his eyes hard, because somehow the darkness around him was _worse_ – was bigger, was hungrier, was more _alive_ – than the darkness behind his eyes.

He knew that he could get up, could cross the room and flick the light switch and make all this go away. He also knew, with equal certainty, that if he sat up and swung his feet to the floor, that there would be no floor to catch him and no walls surrounding him and no light at all, ever again. The couch he was lying on seemed like the only real, solid thing in the world: a lifeboat drifting on a lonely tide of darkness.

He had lain there, paralyzed, for the rest of the night. He must have fallen asleep at some point, without realizing it, because the next thing he remembered was his mother waking him up, scolding him for falling asleep on the couch.

Martin Blackwood looked at the house on Hill Top Road, and he felt that same sinister sense of unreality creeping back up on him.

Objectively, there was nothing strange about the house – it matched its recently built neighbors, neat little allotments for student housing. A roof and walls, doors and windows. The minimum that a bunch of young adults would need, nothing more and nothing less.

And yet…there was something _wrong_ about number 105. Perhaps it was the long scratches that marred the wooden door, or the way that shadows hung about its windows. Perhaps it was the history of the place, hanging around like the sour scent of smoke from a long extinguished fire. Perhaps it was the pervasive odor of rotting wood coming from the front garden, even though nothing was growing there.

Perhaps it was the way the door swung open on its own, before Martin could even reach for the doorknob.

The inside of the house was lined with spider webs. They covered the windows so thoroughly that not even a sliver of light could get through. They spanned every inch of the walls, an intricate construction made up of hypnotizing patterns. Martin let his eyes relax, let world take on a blurred edge – he was sure if he stared at those patterns too long, he would stop being himself and something else would come make a home in his mind.

Instead he looked down.

And then he immediately looked back up, because the floor was a writhing carpet of spiders, crawling over one another, all of them _eating-mating-living-dying-spinning-serving-serving-serving_. Their tiny eyes gleamed, a million pinpricks of light in the darkness – and then a ripple passed over them, a shift like a gathering wave, as they all slowed and stopped and turned to look at him.

Martin cleared his throat. Public speaking had always made him nervous, let alone speaking to an audience of _spiders_ , but at this point it was far from the strangest thing he had ever done.

“Excuse me,” he said, trying not to let his voice shake and trying very hard not to feel like a giant fly. “I’m sorry, but I think I’m expected, and I don’t want to squish any of you and I really doubt that you want to squished, so…”

His voice trailed off as the spiders parted before him, the squirming mass of bodies making a path for him, straight to the basement door.

Martin sighed, rubbed a hand across his face. Of course it was the basement. What had he been expecting?

“Right,” he said, giving the spiders an awkward nod. “Cheers.”

The basement smelled of must and mold, like water-rotted wood and old dried blood. Martin remembered a camping trip, of overturning a log, of seeing the dark damp world that lived beneath it. He remembered that some spiders like the damp, he remembered that some spiders built trick webs and trap doors.

He saw Annabelle Cane and he remembered that some spiders are very, _very_ deadly.

“ _Martin Blackwood_ ,” she said – only, it wasn’t really her saying it, was it? Her mouth was moving but those weren’t her words. “Welcome home.”

“Thank you,” Martin said automatically, because he tended to get overly polite when he was nervous. And then, trying to assert some control over the conversation: “Why did you bring me here?”

“Let’s be clear,” Annabelle said, waving one elegant hand through the air. There was a small lantern by her feet, throwing her shadow against the wall. It seemed bigger than it ought to have been, with far too many limbs. “You brought yourself here. I just…gave you a little nudge.”

Martin took a deep breath, trying to stay relaxed, trying to stay calm, trying very very hard not to recognize the danger he was in.

(What danger? No more danger than normal. He was in the basement of the Institute, of course, making his way down to artifact storage, shying away from the occasional cobweb suspended from the walls.)

“I don’t know what difference that makes,” he said. “And I don’t care. Why do you want me here?”

Annabelle sighed, dropping her head so that her chin touched her chest. She went utterly, utterly still, holding the pose for so long that Martin was worried for her in spite of himself. And then –

And then she began to twitch. Her head jerked from side to side, her hands spasmed, a shudder worked its way through her body until she was one big convulsion. It looked like she was having a seizure, or feeling the effects of some poison. Martin was reminded of a spider in its death throes; he was afraid that if he blinked, he would find her on the ground, her limbs shriveled and curled close to her chest, like all the other dead spiders he’d found in forgotten corners.

And as suddenly as her fit had started, it stopped. She lifted her head, staring at him hard.

Martin felt Its voice before he heard it.

(It started as a shiver at the base of his spine, creeping up towards his neck in order to whisper in his ear. It sounded like the faintest scurry of legs brushing against skin, so light that you couldn’t tell if you were imaging the sensation. It sounded like the vibration of a spider’s web, softer than silk and stronger than steel. It sounded, somehow, like his mother’s voice.)

“You are here of your own free will, Martin Blackwood, because I need you to trust me,” said the Mother of Puppets. “I hope you can appreciate how far this goes against my nature.”

The whole world went dark for a moment; a wave of sheer terror washed over Martin, leaving him dizzy and defenseless. His skin felt hot and cold by turns and his muscles trembled with adrenaline that he couldn’t use.

There was no room for any thoughts in his mind. There was only a feral, animal kind of fear that stung every nerve and held him paralyzed.

He could see now, See it all clearly. The deep crack in the cold concrete floor of the basement. The two impossibly long, impossibly thin legs that stretched out from the darkness, reaching out to rest against Annabelle’s neck. The way her eyes had gone perfectly black and blank – and, and, she had more eyes now, didn’t she? She had only had two of them before, just as she’d only had two arms before…

It was possibly the worst panic attack of his life.

But it was still a panic attack. Martin had dealt with those before.

When he finally became aware of his body again, he forced himself to draw in deep draughts of air, until his oxygen-starved brain began to calm down. It took so much energy just to breathe that he was able to burn off some of the adrenaline still wracking his body.

And then he focused on the sensations around him – the icy sweat that clung to his body, the grit of the concrete beneath his hands and knees. The taste of vomit in the back of his throat, the hot tears that were streaming from his eyes. They were not pleasant sensations, but they were far better than the feeling of un-control that had just taken him over.

Annabelle watched him impassively, tilting her head to the side. “Are you quite finished?”

Martin swallowed hard and pushed himself back to his feet. He was a fair two heads taller than her and far heavier, but somehow she made him feel very, very small. 

She gave a sharp nod. “Good. We have a lot to talk about and we don’t have much time. We need to undo the Watcher’s Crown.”

For the second time in as many minutes, Martin stopped breathing. It felt like the wind had been knocked out him, a sucker punch to the gut.

Funny. It turned out that hope could hurt just as badly as fear.

“Why?” was Martin’s first question, but he had an idea of the answer before the word even left his mouth. “Because you’re not the one in charge?”

Annabelle smiled. Her teeth gleamed sharp and white against the darkness. “Oh, I’m always in charge. But I will admit, it’s less fun when everyone can see you pulling the strings.”

Annabelle’s arms were lifted, her hands dangling limp from her wrists. Martin tilted his head and suddenly he could See the whisper-thin webs that had been twisted about her wrists, a carefully constructed marionette. Behind her, he could See those horrible legs rising from a crack in the foundation of the universe, making Annabelle dance to Their tune.

Annabelle’s arms dropped, the strings vanishing. “Most importantly, it’s extremely boring for me. But it’s also unsustainable. Everyone else is so busy with their ridiculous posturing and convoluted schemes that they don’t care that they’re wasting a perfectly valuable food source. And, once again, for emphasis: a world ruled by the Eye is so incredibly _tedious_.”

Martin blinked. It made sense, in this world’s absurd new definition of ‘sense’. “So if humanity goes mad and ends up annihilating ourselves, you’re all going to starve.”

“Well, there are other dimensions and universes and galaxies that we could feed from, but there’s something so _funny_ about humans.” She gave a little giggle and hugged herself with too many arms, as though she was talking about a litter of puppies. “Hardly any defenses at all, but so resilient and so entertaining to break down! Losing you all would be such a waste.”

Right. So he was hiding in a basement with a living embodiment of fear, who wanted his help to undo one of the greatest disasters in human history, because it considered them to be roughly the equivalent of honey bees.

Martin felt a sharp pain right behind his eyes. These were the kind of thoughts that generated headaches just by existing.

“Right,” he said slowly, remembering something he’d heard on one of the tapes, one that Jon had brought back from America. Rituals as factory farms for fear. “So you want, what, organic fear?”

“I think ‘free range’ might be more accurate.”

Martin took a deep breath, trying to ignore the splitting pain in his head. “And how are you planning on achieving this?”

“You all have such a liner concept of time. Time is nothing but a bunch of strings, a bunch of lives, all woven together into a whole.” She shrugged, her many hands held wide in offering. “You simply find the right string to pull, and _voila._ ”

“And I’m that string.”

“You are, let’s say, uniquely situated. Close to everything and everyone, involved in so many encounters, experiences with so many entities. And somehow, still alive.” She gave him a thoughtful look, all mockery dropped from her expression. “Many have underestimated you, Martin Blackwood. And yet, I think you shall be the one to help me restore some balance to this world.”

Martin hesitated, thinking very hard about her offer, about sincerity and trust, about changing the world, about putting things _right_.

And then Martin realized that he hadn’t thought about being in the Magnus Institute for a very long time.

And Martin realized that he had been distracted and that he had no defense left against the Eye.

And the pain in Martin’s head exploded.

Martin tried to shut his eyes, but there was Something in there with him. It forced them open, not letting him blink until tears streamed from his eyes and the world began to go blurry.

The Something was looking inward on him, watching his memories scanning through their conversation pulling every bit of knowledge from him like sucking marrow from a bone.

The Something was watching through him, looking right at Annabelle. For the first time of his knowing her, she looked afraid.

_(I-SEE-YOU)_

Annabelle swore violently. She Knew – and Martin Knew and Martin Knew that she Knew – that there were people all over Cowley and Oxford and London were suddenly dying to know what was going on at 105 Hill Top Road. These people, the Hunters and the Slaughter-Touched, the Butchers-Of-Men, would be arriving very soon.

Annabelle reached out, gathering threads that glimmered into existence as she touched them. Her motions were frantic, her arms a blur as she worked. Martin watched, feeling strangely calm, feeling outside of everything. His world had already ended once. He had already lost everyone he cared about. What more could They do to him now?

“We’re out of time,” Annabelle snapped, all her arms reaching out for him. “Yes or no?”

But now…now he had the chance to do something to _Them_.

There was just one more thing he needed to know. “Will I still be me? Or will I just be another one of your puppets?”

Annabelle grit her teeth, pulling the strings of history, making the universe into a cat’s cradle between her hands. Dust was falling from the ceiling now, the house shaking as reality itself trembled. “Yes, you’ll still be you!”

“Oh, that’s alright then,” Martin held out his hand. “Yes.”

And two spider legs reached out and pulled him down into the dark space between realities.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy 2020! May everyone have a wonderful year, with lots of excellent reading and writing.


	3. Chapter Three

Martin woke up to a hard surface beneath him and a god-awful screech coming from somewhere over his head.

He hurt, quite badly and all over, as though he’d been dropped from a plane and hit the ground going a thousand miles an hour.

He didn’t even have enough strength to lift his head and investigate the noise. His eyes were burning, as if he’d been staring directly at the sun. He wondered if this was the afterlife, or if it was some cosmic joke that was being played on him. Was it some game of the Web, or a trick of the Eye?

There was a _thump, thump, thump_ from overhead. A groan rose up in his throat – of course Al-From-One-Floor-Up was stomping around, just when Martin needed to rest and figure out what the hell had happened to him.

(Wait. Al-From-One-Floor-Up?)

And then the memories came rushing back. _Of course_ he was lying on his bedroom floor, _of course_ his alarm was going off with the fervor of an air-raid siren, _of course_ Al-From-One-Floor-Up was trouncing about as though the floor had personally offended him. This happened every morning.

Or at least, it had happened every morning until he’d been trapped in his apartment for two weeks and then moved into the Archives.

A surge of adrenaline shot through him, teaming up with the exhaustion to create a hellish state of panic mixed with apathy. He needed to – he needed to get help, or _something –_

With great effort, feeling rather like Atlas with the world on his shoulders, Martin pushed himself up from the floor. He had to use the bedpost to lever himself up, his worn out socks slippery on the cold wood boards. There was a terrible pressure in his head and his muscles refused to work properly – he missed once as he reached for the television remote on the bedside table, and dropped it twice before he could manage enough fine motor control to actually turn on the telly.

Jaunty intro music filled the room, followed by the bright tones of a BBC newscaster. Martin couldn’t make out the words – nothing made sense, his nerves were too sensitive to truly process anything – but he could just barely make out the date in the corner of the overly-bright screen.

_Marth 16th, 2015._

The first thing Martin did was fumble through the contacts in his phone, eyes squinted shut against the light of the screen, and call out of sick to work.

He must have sounded exactly as terrible as he felt, because Rosie didn’t even ask any questions, just told him to get some rest and call back if he needed more time off.

The second thing he did was pass out in his bed.

It was not an easy sleep.

It was a tossing-and-turning sleep. A fever-dream-delirium sleep. A shiver-til-your-bones-break sleep.

He was walking through four years of memories, all of them twisted together into a seamless nightmare: _behold-hunt-fall-behold-corrupt-bury-slaughter-behold-spiral-behold-tangle-alone-alone-alone._ There was too much this information in his head, trying to fit itself into a mind that was unaccustomed to the eldritch.

This mind, _his old mind,_ did not know how to comprehend the supernatural. It hadn’t yet built up a tolerance to the impossible. It didn’t know that you had to relax into it, that you couldn’t panic over it – you just had to accept it for what it was. It didn’t know that you had to bend your mind so that They couldn’t break it.

(It _would_ break, eventually. Everyone broke in the end.)

(But sometimes, Martin found, you could delay the inevitable.)

It took two days for his fever to break.

Martin woke up to sweat-soaked sheets and torn bedding; he’d clawed through it in his dream-haze. His skin was scale-dry and his limbs were stiff. His mouth tasted horrid. He smelled terrible. The television was still blaring away; some American oil magnate – Mark Best, or something – had just joined the ranks of the world’s top ten wealthiest people.

Some people really had it easy.

Carefully, he slid out of the bed, wincing as pain shot through every bit of his body. His knees nearly buckled when he tried to stand straight; he had to lean against the walls and hang onto bits of furniture as he made his way to the kitchen.

He stuck his head under the tap, the water a shock against his skin. He drank until his thirst was slacked, water spilling down his chin and dripping onto his clothes. He groped about blindly over his head, yanking the tap to the right and making the water as cold as it could go.

He was bent nearly double over the sink, his nose a few inches away from a pile of dirty dishes. Freezing water pelted against his skin, so cold that he shivered in spite of the fever-heat lingering in his bones. His whole body ached, his stomach roiled from lack of food. And somehow, he felt better – more awake, more _alive_ – than he had in months.

(This body hadn’t been terrorized yet. This body hadn’t felt the stress fractures of fear; this body didn’t bear the literal scars of all his experiences. This body was young, strong. This body might be able to quit his job at the Archives. This body might still walk away from everything.)

(Except this body belonged to Martin Blackwood, which meant that he didn’t even consider walking away for a second.)

He reached up and turned the water off, carefully extricating himself from under the tap. He needed to make a plan.

He made it exactly one step from the sink before his mutinous stomach declared that, _no, first he needed to eat._

Martin sank down onto his living room rug, arranging his supplies around him. A notebook and pen. A calendar. A tour guide to London, with street maps and a map of the Underground. A cup of sugar-strong tea and a plate of biscuits to nibble on, because the only other thing in the apartment was tinned food that he couldn’t quite bring himself to eat. 

Martin sat down, trying not to feel overwhelmed and failing miserably.

The logical thing, he decided, was to start with a To-Do List.

The first thing he wrote down was: _keep everyone safe._

Then he decided that seemed a little ambitious, so he crossed it out.

Eventually he came up with this, written in a shaky hand across a cheap spiral notebook:

  1. ~~Keep Everyone Safe~~ Keep Everyone Alive. ~~~~
  2. Keep Everyone ~~Human~~ Mostly Human. ~~~~
  3. Stop The Apocalypse. ~~~~



He decided to be satisfied with that, for now. It covered the main points. He could always add more details later.

Then he turned to the calendar and maps, trying to mark down everything he remembered happening and where it had happened. Some were easy – he could quite clearly remember that address of Carlos Vittery’s house and the time frame where he had been trapped by Jane Prentiss. He remembered the dates that the Institute had been attacked, and when the Unknowing had been attempted. He could even recognize this week, the week of March 16th, as his first week as an archival assistant.

(It had been Jon’s first week as Archivist. It had been the beginning and end of everything.)

Others were harder, though. He had never been the best at remembering dates; there were some cases he hadn’t been sent to research and tapes he had never gotten to listen to. Later, when their paranoia and fear had begun to spiral out of control, communication had broken down between all of them. Tim and Jon first, and then Melanie had been too angry to really speak with them and then Martin…well, Martin had gone to the Lonely.

So, he had a three-point plan and a half-sketched idea of what the next years would bring. It wasn’t much, but it was, frankly, more preparation than had gone into ninety percent of their escapades.

Finally, Martin pulled out his old laptop and opened up a search for _signs of depression._

Anxiety, hopelessness, loss of interest in activities, irritability, isolation, insomnia – the symptoms went on and on. The first list he pulled up rang so many bells that he might as well have been at Notre Dame Cathedral.

So, yeah, Jon had probably been depressed since the beginning. Fear gods and horrible manipulative bosses and a few dozen scars to his psyche certainly wouldn’t have helped anything. Come to think of it, Martin might have been pretty depressed as well.

(And for once in his life, Martin actually considered the thought, instead of instantly banishing it to the darkest corners of his mind.)

Were they depressed because they worked at the Magnus Archives, or did they work at the Magnus Archives because they were depressed? Had Tim and Sasha felt the same way and just been better at hiding it?

He opened up another window and started a new search: _how to help a friend with depression?_

In the end, Martin gave himself one more day.

Just one, just one more Thursday where he didn’t need to worry about the world ending. No gods and no monsters. He just sat in a café, tea and a bowl of soup in front of him, notebook and pen by his side. Rain cascading off the awnings and people hurrying across the sidewalk, their coats swishing and umbrellas bobbing.

He tried to write some poetry, but the words just wouldn’t come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for the kudos and comments! It's so encouraging to get a response to my writing and it's really helpful to know what you're all thinking about the story so far!


	4. Chapter Four

The Magnus Institute was a tall and narrow building. It stood alone on the streets of London, with alleyways to either side, as though its neighbors did not wish to be associated with it. People would walk a little more quickly as they went by, even if they weren’t necessarily aware of the Institute’s mission. There was something vaguely intimidating about it, like seeing a letter-opener casually lying across someone’s desk – an impression of something austere and antique and sharp.

There was a touch of the Gothic about the Institute: a precision to its arched windows and a certain grace to the pillars that supported the vaulted entrance. A huge convex rose window overlooked the street and once upon a time Martin would have described its swirling colors and abstract patterns as a sun-struck ocean or an impressionist masterpiece. Now he could not think of it as anything but the iris of a giant eye watching over all who passed by.

The interior did not inspire quite as much apprehension. It was neat and very nearly modern inside – it gave the impression of a building that had been refurbished right before interior design fads had shifted and left it stuck with yesteryear’s styles. To any visitor, it was a place so broken in by use that it felt almost-but-not-quite-familiar, almost-but-not-quite-comfortable. It was easy to see where the money got spent: the furniture could hardly be considered _en vogue_ and the break room appliances hadn’t been replaced in a decade, but they always had the latest in preservation equipment and state-of-the-art climate control for the more delicate manuscripts.

The first floor housed the administrative staff, the second and third floors held the library and research divisions, the fourth floor belonged to artefact storage. And in the basement, like a tell-tale heart beneath the floorboards, was the Archives. 

It was the sanctuary of nightmares. It was a compendium of horror. It was the place Martin was fast-walking to, because he was almost-nearly late for work.

The last time he had seen this place, it was blood-spattered and gore-stained. As he jogged down the basement staircase it was difficult _not_ to remember the sticky, slippery feeling of torn flesh beneath his feet. Some of it had still been warm. The carpet had been so saturated with blood that it had squished up around his shoes.

And now the scariest thing on the walls was a poster announcing – or possibly threatening? – an attendance-required budget meeting. Even the bright cartoon smiley-face proclaiming this message managed to look a bit nervous.

Martin reached the bottom step, so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t hear the office door beside him opening. His head was down, so he did not see the person stepping out in front of him or the too-tall stack of filing boxes teetering in their arms.

He did, however, feel the tile floor go too slick and too smooth under his feet as he left the stairs. And he did, however, hear the loud yelp that the other person let out as their feet started to slide out from under them.

Martin had survived a very long time by reacting on instinct. His reflexes were far sharper than they had been before the Watcher’s Crown, but even he was a bit surprised by how quickly his hand darted out and caught the person by their elbow. Their well-worn sweater was soft against his hands, even though their elbow was sharp and bony.

Their weight threw Martin off balance and he began to slip, but he was close enough to the steps that he just staggered backwards and let them break his fall, dragging the other person down with him, their back pressed against his chest. It was all over in a second but adrenaline made Martin’s blood rush – for a moment all he could see was blood and bodies in the hallway.

So, it took him far too long to realize that he had his arms wrapped around Jonathan Sims.

_Jon_ , he wanted to say. He wanted to whisper it, shout it, unbind it like birdsong to the open air. _Jon,_ alive. _Jon,_ real beneath his hands. _Jon_ , all beating heart and heaving lungs. _Jon_ – over and over like a prayer, until he could finally believe that it was real.

Instead, the first thing that spilled out of his mouth was, “Oh, that’s right, they waxed the floors last night, didn’t they?”

And Jon’s voice – desert-dry and clipped and elegant, like the scratch of a quill pen across paper. “An astounding observation. Whatever gave it away?”

Martin retracted his arms quickly, because he could feel Jon’s nervous tension turning him sharp and taut as a piano wire. He let go, even though he was dizzy with wanting, even though his heart ached when Jon bolted to his feet.

Of course. He had no right to hold this man, this stranger that he knew too well. There was nothing they shared now, not life nor death. Certainly not whatever bright and cautious thing they had begun building in Scotland. He felt guilty to even look at Jon, as though it would be forcing some unwanted intimacy on him.

(But he looked anyway, because a starving man eats and a drowning man gasps for air.)

And, oh god, looking was definitely a mistake because Jon was being so completely wholly unabashedly _Jon_ about things: slipping again as soon as he got to his feet and trying to brace himself against the wall instead of grabbing the stair-rail like a sensible person. The floor was too slick to provide any proper traction so he just slid down the wall, a look of indignant resignation on his face, until he finally hit the floor.

His legs were all sprawled out in front of him. He was clutching the filing boxes like they were life preservers. His glasses were balanced precariously on the tip of his nose and his face was scrunched up trying to keep them in place. He looked thin but not malnourished, tired but not exhausted – this was Jon of four years ago, all sharp-boned and fine-featured, dark skin and darker hair. And his eyes – god, his _eyes_ , the eyes that Martin thought he would never see again – just a little too large for his face and so bright that he looked perpetually fever-struck.

He looked so young that it broke Martin’s heart.

“You alright there?” someone asked. It took Martin a moment to realize that he was the one who spoke.

And _ohhh_ , he recognized this unreal feeling, this strange delay between action and thought. It had started happening after the Watcher’s Crown, when he got too panicked but still needed to accomplish things. It was as if his body went on autopilot, leaving his brain to do the emotional equivalent of screaming into a pillow for a few hours. Sometimes he would leave the house in the morning and then find himself back home in the evening, with only the vaguest memory of what had happened in-between.

“Fine,” Jon snapped, shoving his glasses back to the bridge of his nose with a vicious amount of force. He somehow managed to convey ‘ _do not talk to me, do not look at me, do not acknowledge this situation_ ’ in a single syllable. “Just…absolutely fine!”

Christ, this was almost worse than their _first_ first meeting.

“Here, give me those for a second,” Martin reached out for the filing boxes and Jon made a wordless noise of protest, gripping them even tighter. God, was the Eye infecting him already or was he just being a contrary bastard? “I’m not going hurt them, promise, I just don’t want them spilling while we get up.”

Jon eyed Martin with a faint air of suspicion – as if he had broken into the Institute to steal a random stack of boxes from the first person he saw. To be fair, it was probably not the most ridiculous thing that had happened in the Archives, but wasn’t it a little early for any relentless paranoia to be making an appearance?

Martin kept his hands held out, kept them steady and unshaking. After a long moment of examination, Jon passed the boxes off to him, one by one.

Martin settled the boxes on the step beside him and then reached out again, this time for Jon. Jon accepted more quickly this time, letting Martin haul him back to his feet. His hands were rougher than Martin expected, his fingertips callused and his skin drawn tight over his bones. He could feel Jon’s hands more than he could feel his own – his sense of where his body began and ended was deteriorating rapidly.

“You’re Jon Sims, right?” he heard himself ask. “The new head archivist?”

Jon tilted his head, looking up at Martin. He was just a few inches shorter than Martin was, the perfect height for casual forehead kisses. “I’m sorry, have we met before?”

“Sorry, sorry, right – bit of a time-travel accident. Your first time meeting me, my second time meeting you,” The words tumbled out before Martin could stop them, but it wasn’t any compulsion that drove them. His mind was feeling a little fuzzy around the edges, but he knew one thing with perfect clarity: too many people had lied to Jon about their intentions and manipulated him to their own ends. Martin refused to add himself to their number, not so long as he could help it. “And, uh, Tim’s described you before.”

Jon looked mildly pained now, but Martin couldn’t tell if it was due to the idea that Tim had been gossiping about him or because he was trapped in a conversation with an apparent madman. “Ah, well – yes, that’s me. Guilty as charged.”

Martin reached down and grabbed the filing boxes again, holding them out to Jon like the world’s strangest olive branch. “Sorry, I’m Martin Blackwood – I’m actually one of your assistants? Sorry I haven’t been in until now, but I didn’t think that getting everyone else sick would make a good first impression.”

Jon’s face did a complicated thing as Martin babbled on – a rapid flicker of expressions that ranged from recognition to vague disapproval to consideration to understanding. By the time Martin had finally run out of words, he had settled on a polite, if slightly strained, smile. “Are you, ah, quite sure you’re well enough to be at work?”

Oh, okay. Jon had done his lightning quick Occam’s Razor thing and come to the most logical conclusion, albeit one that was slightly to the left of correct. Martin could work with that.

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine now! Bit groggy from the medication and all, but it should wear off pretty soon. And I really can’t miss any more work – only so much sick leave to go around, you know?”

“Of course,” Jon finally took the boxes back from Martin. The stack was tall enough to block his face, leaving his voice muffled. “You know where the offices are, I suppose?”

“Kind of?”

“Right,” Jon sighed. He turned about carefully, this time sliding his shoes along the floor like an ice skater. “Well, come on then, I’ll show you. Seeing as we’re headed in the same direction, anyway.”

They walked in silence for a bit. The trip took far longer than usual, seeing as they were forced to take tiny penguin-steps in order to keep their balance. Martin dragged one hand along the wall, trying to focus on the rough plaster beneath his fingertips. Everything felt a little dream-like, the world gone all soft and strange.

He felt disconnected from his body, as though his stumble on the stairs had jarred his soul right out of his flesh. He had to concentrate in order to bring himself back – he really couldn’t afford to drift away right now, not now that he was here in the Archives. He counted the sensations of his body, even though it didn’t quite feel like _his_ body at the moment. This body was too hot and too cold all at once, sweat gathering on its palms and a shiver working its way through the spine. He could feel, all too acutely, the pounding of its heart.

God, this wasn’t even because of the Entities or the time travel. This was just the good old-fashioned misery of having a crush.

“So…” Martin cast about for a conversation topic. The buzzing of the florescent lights was grating on his nerves and he needed something to drown it out. “How have things been going so far? I heard things got a bit out of control down here, with all the paper and everything?”

The corner of Jon’s mouth twisted down into a grimace. “It has been, let’s say, less than ideal. These boxes alone have statements from ten different decades all jumbled together – and every other filing cabinet down here is the same way. I have no idea what Ms. Robinson was doing for the last few years of her employment, but it was definitely not developing a decent organizational system.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out soon, though! Have you asked Sasha about setting up a digital system or anything? I think she worked in the library while she was at uni, maybe she knows something about getting things organized!” Martin cringed a bit at the over-eager cheerfulness in his voice. Old habits died hard, it seemed – and this brain still had all its neurons patterned around being helpful and non-threatening.

Jon only blinked, casting a somewhat surprised look at Martin. “I didn’t know she’d done any of that. That might – well, that might actually be useful. Do you, ah, know each other well?”

“Oh, a little bit! Haven’t ever had a really deep conversation about anything, but I caught lunch with her and Tim a few times. Actually,” he said, the lie queuing up on his tongue before he could stop it. “Actually, we were talking about doing a pub quiz night next Friday, get to know each other a little better since we’re all going to be working together. Would you want to come?”

Jon’s look went from ‘somewhat surprised’ to ‘the-world’s-turned-upside-down surprised’. “Oh, er – wouldn’t that be cheating?”

“What?”

“Since – since you’ve time-traveled. You’d have heard the answers before.” Jon shifted his grip on the boxes, hiding his face as he used his head to brace up the stack. “That was a joke.”

“Oh, right! No, I get it now.” Martin tried to will down a blush, but there was no force in the world that could stop it from spreading across his fair skin. Maybe one day he would stop making a fool of himself in front of Jon. “But no, no cheating! We didn’t do any pub quizzes last time. Our other first meeting wasn’t great. There were statements everywhere. And tea…everywhere.”

They both went quiet again. Martin resisted the sudden urge to hunt down Annabelle and beg her for a trip back to this morning. She’d probably only want his immortal soul or his spleen or something in return.

“Right, well, here’s my office,” Jon said, coming to a sudden stop. He balanced the stack of boxes on one knee and used one hand to grope around for the doorknob. He looked like a rather ungainly crane. The stack wobbled. “You’ll be the door across the hall, there should be everything you need at your desk but the supply closet is at the end of the hall –” 

Martin reached over and rescued the boxes from Jon, just as the door swung open and Jon half-stumbled inside.

“Thank you.” Jon said stiffly. He took the boxes back and then shut the door behind him with a sharp _click_.

Martin stood there for a few seconds longer than reasonable, watching Jon’s blurry silhouette through the frosted glass windowpane. He turned around and took a step towards the assistants’ joint office, when he heard Jon clear his throat.

“Martin,” Jon said. The door was open just a crack and his voice sounded strangely hesitant. “I’ll consider the pub quiz night. If there’s not too much work to be done on Friday, that is.”

The door shut again.

Martin took two swift steps to the assistants’ office and closed the door gently behind him. Then he buried his face in his hands and screamed for a minute.

He only stopped when he felt a light touch on his shoulder. “Alright there, Martin?” a woman asked. There a strange echo to her voice, as though everything she said had a bit of reverb laid over it.

When he looked up, there were two different women in front of him – and then his vision blurred and they resolved into one person. She was just as tall as he was, even in her flats. Her hair hung down almost to her waist, gleaming golden against the dingy basement lighting. She blinked blue eyes behind oversized glasses, her eyebrows furrowed in concern.

It was _her,_ it was absolutely her, how had he forgotten, how had they ever been fooled by that awful unlikeness that had stolen her life –

“Seriously, Martin, are you okay?” asked Sasha James. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

Martin blinked once, twice. He tried to remember how to be a person. What would Regular Old Martin have said? “I just met our new boss.”

“Oh god, did he emotionally eviscerate you already?” Tim leaned back in his desk chair, tossing a pencil towards the ceiling. The point stuck in the particle board right over his desk, where someone had drawn a clumsy approximation of a dartboard. “I told you he could be a bit spiky.”

“You didn’t tell me he was really bloody handsome!” Martin wailed. He slumped over to his desk and hid his face again, so he wouldn’t have to look at his friends. His very much _alive_ friends – and it was fantastic, it really was, so why were his hands shaking so badly? “I panicked and invited him to our pub quiz night!”

“Martin.” There was another small _thunk_ as a pencil struck home. “We don’t have a pub quiz night.”

“We do now,” Martin risked looking up, sending Tim a pleading look. He hoped his pale face and wild eyes could be taken for lovesickness. He hoped if he fainted they would pass it off as his flu making a come-back. “Come on, Tim, solidarity!”

“Is this more a ‘workers of the world unite’ solidarity, or an ‘everyone here fancies men’ solidarity?” Sasha asked idly, sending her own pencil rocketing towards the ceiling and knocking down two of Tim’s. 

“More of a ‘my boss can get screwed’ situation or an ‘I want to screw my boss’ situation?” Tim shot back, their banter falling into a painfully familiar back-and-forth.

Martin listened to their teasing for another minute, before he couldn’t stand it anymore. He excused himself to the bathroom, where he could have a panic attack in peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Martin: I can't wait to see my friends, who I love and miss very much!  
> Martin: *sees his his friends*  
> Martin, disassociating: This is fine!
> 
> Seriously, thank you all for the kudos and the very kind comments - it's wonderful to be writing in such a supportive fandom! I really appreciate the time you all take to engage with me, both with the reading and the commenting. It makes writing a lot more fun, knowing that people are enjoying things.
> 
> If you want another way to follow me, my tumblr can be found here: [jay-jay-bird](https://jay-jay-bird.tumblr.com/).


	5. Chapter Five

When Martin first arrived at the Magnus Institute, he was twenty-two and determined to look older.

He was given a cramped, featureless office on the first floor. He spent most of his time reading through grant proposals and applications for the research library. The documents were filled with jargon that only a parapsychologist would have been able to parse. Martin rejected most of them out of hand, for fear that in choosing one he’d make a mistake too obvious to ignore.

Martin was twenty-two. Every day, he went to work. He drank lukewarm tea under glaring white walls. He waved to his colleagues and listened to their small talk, but didn’t offer information on himself. He labored over each proposal until the words began to have meaning.

It wasn’t that hard to look older, he realized. You just had to let all your tiredness show.

When Martin first met Timothy Stoker, he was twenty-six and desperately lonely.

He had a colorful collection of mugs stored on his office bookcase and a few that had migrated to the staff breakroom. He had tacked a cluster of postcards to the blank white walls – there was nothing written on them, of course, but no one had to know that. He approved most of the research applications and about a tenth of the grant proposals. He practiced lies in the mirror until they felt true, like stones polished smooth by anxious hands.

And one afternoon Tim knocked on his door, asking if there had been any grants dedicated to the research of Russian history.

And he came back next week, asking if there was any unpublished information on Robert Smirke.

And he came back the week after that, asking if Martin wanted to get lunch with him.

Martin was twenty-six. He had lost track of all his friends from secondary school, after he’d dropped out to work full time. He’d never had the chance to attend university, or even a technical college. He was too anxious to join a hobby group and too self-conscious to visit bars. His mother refused to answer his calls to the care home.

There was something hungry beneath his skin, longing for company – and when Tim asked, he couldn’t say no.

When Martin first transferred to the Archives, he was twenty-eight and almost happy.

He had lunch with Tim and Sasha every few weeks. They made a game of trying every over-priced café within walking distance of the Institute, trying to find the perfect croissant or baklava or whatever else Sasha fancied that week. Their company was well worth the money he spent to enjoy it.

Whenever Tim had to travel for research, he would send Martin a postcard. Even if the town was only a few hours away. Even if Tim always arrived back before the postcard got delivered. Martin hung those on the wall too, but he hung them with the words facing outwards – terrible puns and silly doodles and the words _miss you!_ on every card. It was only a joke, since Tim was never away for more than a business day, but sometimes Martin would pretend that it wasn’t. He liked the idea: that he was a person who would be missed.

He went to holiday parties at the Institute. On those nights the world was warm and hazy and lit only by fairy lights. He shared drunken giggles with Sasha and snogged Tim under the mistletoe.

On one forgettable day, Elias summoned Martin to his office. He offered a new position in the Archives: the chance to work on a team, to provide valuable research and support to the Institute. To finally move up from the job he’d held for six long years.

Martin knew nothing about archiving. Or historical research. Or preserving documents, or taking statements, or conducting in-depth interviews. He took the job anyway.

(He had lied his way through everything else in his life. What could be different about this time?)

His new position came with a raise, just large enough that he could start putting money aside instead of living from paycheck to paycheck. To celebrate, he bought himself a fancy notebook, one with crisp pages and a soft leather binding. He pretended that one day he would be brave enough to stain it with ink.

When Martin first saw Jon, he was twenty-eight. And for a moment, everything in the world was perfect.

When Martin watched the world end, he was thirty-one and nothing would ever be right again.

When Martin first transferred to the Archives, he was twenty-eight but his eyes looked older. He was twenty-eight and aching for the people he had once known. He was twenty-eight and filled with a manic joy so strong that it scared him.

He was twenty-eight for the second time and he was going to make things right.

(He was going to make things right or he was going to die trying.)

And right now, making things right involved convincing Jon to leave his office at a reasonable hour.

Tim thumped a fist against the door of Jon’s office. “Jon, come on!”

From the other side of the door, there was a loud _click_ and an even louder curse. “Tim, I was _recording!_ ”

“No, you weren’t, I heard you say ‘statement ends’ –” Tim banged on the door once more for good measure. The frosted glass rattled in its pane. The sound echoed down corridors made lonely with evening quiet.

In a fit of environment stewardship, Elias had ordered motion-activated lights installed in the basement. There had been no movement within the basement for quite some time, so the hallways were shadow-shrouded and cold. It was creepy, even if they didn’t want to admit it out loud to each other. This left the archival assistants huddled together in the patch of light between the office doors, tugging on their coats and tying up scarves as they waited for Jon.

“Think he’ll actually come?” Sasha asked. She and Martin were leaning against the wall, watching Tim argue with the door. Currently, the door appeared to be winning.

Martin made a humming noise – not quite a _yes_ but not quite _no_ , either. He kept his gaze fixed to the end of the hall and the hazy red glow of the ‘exit’ sign pointing their way out.

It had been a week and it still hurt to look right at Sasha. There were too many memories of the Not-Her stuffed into his head. The thing that had stolen her whole, heart and bones and skin. The thing that erased her from the world as though she had never mattered.

He was the only person who remembered both of them: the her and the Not-Her that only existed in his memories. It gave him a headache whenever he thought about it too hard. He recognized and didn’t recognize her at the same time. A part of him was still convinced that the Not-Sasha was the True-Sasha. Another part knew that the Sasha standing next to him – one foot braced against the wall, face lit bright by her phone screen – was the one and only Sasha James.

(But he knew that someday he might pass by a Stranger sitting at her desk. And he knew that when he saw that Stranger, he would think _the exact same thing._ )

There was a sudden rush of warm air as Jon threw open the office door. He stood nose-to-nose with Tim and hissed “I was recording _additional remarks._ ”

Tim just shoved his hands into his pockets, grinning. “Hi there, Jon! What fantastic timing! Seeing as you’re heading out of the office, want to come to the pub with us?”

“I was not leaving and you know it –”

“Come on, Jon, please?” Sasha chimed in. She pushed herself off the wall and sidled up next to Tim, crowding the office doorway. “You’re not going to abandon us to Tim’s general knowledge, are you?”

“Hey!”

Martin hung back, watching. More specifically, he hung back and watched Jon.

His breathing was quick and shallow. There was a ragged edge to his voice, no matter how he tried to disguise it with sharp words. He leaned his weight against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest – an affect of indifference that hid the shaking of his body. His pupils were blown wide; Martin could hardly see his irises at all. There was only bone-white sclera and the glittering void of his pupils, forced open so that he could See everything.

Jon was scared.

In his first life, it had taken Martin over a year to realize that Jon could even feel afraid. Some combination of Jon’s caustic personality and Martin’s crush-fueled idealization had made him seem invincible. There had been a running joke among the institute staff: a ghost could materialize right in front of him and Jon would still demand three different forms of identification. The apocalypse could slouch forward all it wanted, but it would stop at Jon’s desk. The impossible was turned away with a sharp rebuke for interrupting his research.

Hell, it had taken a full-scale worm invasion for Jon to admit that he actually believed in the supernatural.

Martin knew better now, though. He Knew –

_Jonah Magnus wanted Jon scared. Jonah Magnus wanted him scarred. Jonah Magnus wanted to Watch Jon traumatize himself, over and over and over_

– And the Knowledge filled him with a cold rage.

It was the rage that kept him gentle when he reached out to tug on Tim’s arm. The rage kept his voice soft when he said, “Have you got some stuff to finish up, Jon? We could wait for you in the lobby, if that’s better.”

Jon pushed his glasses up into his hair, rubbing a hand across his eyes – as though he would stop being Seen if he couldn’t see. There was something achingly vulnerable about him in that moment. His slumped shoulders and the fine tremor in his fingers. The smudges on his glasses and a loose thread dangling from his sweater cuff. His humanity, unraveled before them. “Yes. Fine. I’ll meet you at the entrance. Ten minutes.”

They loitered in the Institute’s main lobby, the three of them squished onto a sofa that had all the structural integrity of a meringue. Despite its alarming tendency to wobble, it had been there since Martin started at the Institute and it would likely be there after him. Tim and Sasha were leaning close over Tim’s phone, scrolling through an Onion article satirizing Mark Best’s recent acquisition of a submarine fleet. Their snickers were the only thing that broke the quiet.

Rain had begun to patter down against the windows, the hesitant first drops that usually heralded a much larger storm. Martin watched Tim and Sasha from the corner of his eye. He prayed that the weather wasn’t going all symbolic on him.

There was a guilt that he now carried in his whole body. It ratcheted the tension in his jaw and turned his hands clumsy. He’d thought it all out, of course – there was no way he could convince Tim and Sasha to quit, not when there was no evidence for it. All that would do was convince them that he was mad and show his hand too early, alerting Elias to the wrench in his plans. There was the chance that they were already locked into their fates and that they wouldn’t be able to quit, even if they wanted to.

It was logical, but the guilt weighed him down all the same.

(These were excuses, of course. He wanted to keep them safe, but he also wanted to keep them close. He did not want to be alone again.)

Tim threw an arm over Martin’s shoulder and gave him a little shake, startling him out of his thoughts. “Earth to Martin! How’d you end up being a Jon-Whisperer? I’ve known him nearly three years and he’s never agreed to drinks _once_.”

For a minute Martin could only stammer, the words stillborn in his mouth. He wasn’t used to this Tim, either. This Tim who was popular not because he was outrageously handsome, but because he cared so quickly and so genuinely. This extroverted Tim. This Tim who always seemed a little buzzed before the drinks even arrived, because he got high just from being around his friends. This Tim who was giving him a mock pout, his voice imploring: “Seriously, Martin, teach me your man-charming ways?”

Martin, blushing furiously, did the only reasonable thing and clamped a hand over Tim’s mouth. He could feel Tim’s grin stretching wide beneath his palm. It was the only warning he got before Tim poked him in the ribs, right where Martin was very ticklish.

It was a very brief but dirty war. The couch made a noise that suggested one of its main supports had snapped. Sasha had curled up on her cushion, shaking with laughter and filming them on her phone.

Martin had just gotten Tim into a very careful headlock when Jon asked, “Are you all quite finished?”

He was standing in front of the couch, tapping one polished shoe against the stone floor – as he’d been waiting for them and not the other way round. He looked a bit steadier than he had before, but he was clutching the strap of his messenger bag with a rigor-mortis grip, his posture hunched and defensive. He was not wearing a coat.

Tim wiggled out of Martin’s grasp and got to his feet. The couch sobbed in relief. “Yes, let’s go, _vamanos_ , _allons-y_ ,”

“Hang on a tick. Jon, have you got a coat?” Martin held out a hand for Sasha, pulling her to her feet.

“No?” Jon’s tone suggested that this was very personal information and frankly none of Martin’s business.

“Two seconds then, I’ve got an umbrella in the cloak room.”

The streetlights reflected off the rain-slick pavement, a low golden shine that wavered and broke as fresh rain came down around them. It was barely gone six, but the winter darkness that stole across the sky gave the illusion of a later hour. Tim and Sasha both had heavy coats with hoods; they’d ended up walking slightly ahead, leaving Jon and Martin to huddle under the umbrella.

The umbrella was technically sized for a single person. They had to huddle quite close.

The city hummed with a low ambiance of rushing cars and falling rain, filling the silence between them. Jon didn’t look inclined towards conversation anyway. His pace kept faltering, distraction showing in every line of his body. He constantly looked towards the alleyways, where a few determined smokers could be found sheltering from the rain.

Of course. The Anglerfish.

Jon stumbled over an uneven break in the pavement, too busy with the monsters in his mind to notice the road in front of him. Martin reached out a hand to steady him and pulled it back the second that Jon found his balance. He didn’t want the temptation of Jon’s rain-soaked curls, the droplets that clung to his dark eyelashes.

“Long day? You seem a little…” Martin’s voice trailed off as he searched for a polite substitute for ‘so tired you’re basically drunk’.

Jon shrugged. “I worked a bit late last night, that’s all.” Which was Jon’s polite substitute for ‘I stayed so late that I ended up scaring the cleaning crew and they filed a complaint with HR’.

“Well, I’m sure getting some food in you might help. I think they’ve done studies on that.”

Jon made a disgruntled sound, like a cat whose sleep had just been disturbed. “Who are ‘ _they_ ’? Which studies? Are they peer reviewed?”

In another world, Martin would have quailed at his snippy remarks. He would have spent the next few days agonizing over the conversation, berating himself for being an idiot. He would have been quiet and helpful afterwards, atoning for the mistake he must have made.

But now he knew that Jon just got stroppy when he was scared, so he blithened on anyway.

“Let’s see – there was the study where a horrible manager made me work a ten hour shift with no break and then I nearly fainted taking the tube home. Really small sample size, of course, but I found it convincing.”

Jon laughed. It was a rasping and startled noise, but it was unmistakably a laugh. “Retail,” he said, the words half choked. “I think I would rather die than ever work in retail again.”

Martin could think of no clever response for that.

Up ahead, Tim held open the pub door and waved Sasha through. There was warmth and light and bright chatter streaming from the building. For a moment, Martin pretended that it was a doorway to a kinder world.

Jon squared his shoulders and straightened his shirt cuffs, as if he was walking to an execution instead of trivia night. “Right,” he said. “Here we go.”

Martin hung back for a moment, shaking the rain off the umbrella and watching as the others grabbed a high-top table. He tried to fix the image in his memory – the three of them, shining in the light.

“Yeah,” Martin said to himself. “Here we go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, through gritted teeth: They are going to have one night where they're happy and not in danger, they are going to have one night where they're happy and not in danger.
> 
> Thank you all so much for the kind comments and kudos! You're all so wonderful and thoughtful and I really appreciate you guys taking the time to give me feedback. It's really encouraging and helpful and it makes me happier than words can say.
> 
> Speaking of, everyone should check out the 'Works Inspired By' section for some amazing art by kittenwithclaws! It's beautiful and exactly how I imagined the scene when I was writing it.
> 
> If you want another way to follow me, check out my Tumblr [Jay-Jay-Bird](https://jay-jay-bird.tumblr.com/). Hope everyone stays as safe and healthy as they can during these interesting times.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Second First Meeting](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23120119) by [kittenwithclaws](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittenwithclaws/pseuds/kittenwithclaws)




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